Say hello to Bootstrap 2.0

Tuesday, 31 January 2012

Six months ago we open-sourced Twitter Bootstrap, an extensive front-end toolkit for developing web sites and applications.

Since then, Bootstrap has grown to be one of the most popular projects on GitHub, the largest open source code host in the world, with over 16,000 watchers and 3,000 forks. Bootstrap’s contributors continue to humble and amaze us. People everywhere are using it in creative ways, including projects like NASA’s code.nasa.gov and MSNBC’s Breaking News.

After months of development, we’re ready to introduce the next major release, Bootstrap 2.

What’s new

Bootstrap 2 brings a plethora of changes and new features to the toolkit, many added as a result feedback from the community. In addition, much of our work was guided by our experiences of working on Twitter.com’s latest redesign where we created a flexible and durable design system. We took the same approach to Bootstrap 2 and came away with more features, better documentation, smarter default styling, and more.

Here’s a look at some of the most prominent changes:

  • Completely overhauled documentation for nearly every component
  • A brand new Customize page to tailor your Bootstrap experience
  • New 12-column, responsive grid system
  • New table styles with a common base class for improved compatibility with other tools
  • New form styles with smarter defaults, requiring less HTML
  • Icons, graciously provided by Glyphicons
  • New, smarter navigation components
  • New buttons, button groups, and button dropdowns
  • New, simpler alert messages
  • New javascript plug-ins like carousel, collapse, and typeahead

We’ve also closed dozens of bugs and made a lot of improvements under the hood for Bootstrap 2. Be sure to check out the closed issues list for a more complete set of bugs we addressed. For those upgrading from a previous version, please read the upgrading overview page as much has changed.

Looking ahead

In the coming months, we’ll continue to work with the open source community to evolve and iterate on Bootstrap. With a refreshed, simplified and more durable code base to work from, we continue to have plenty of opportunities for new features.

Head to the official Bootstrap homepage to get started.